Good Days and Bad Days. . . and Mercury Retrograde

Last night I dream I’m driving my 1955 Morris Mini through miles and miles of crowded streets in England. I need to get to London to do something— I’m lost. I finally pull to the side and go into a store where a girl looks at my map and tells me I’m heading north— the wrong direction! I realize I have to turn around and go back (I also wonder if there’s someway I can ship this baby, my darling Buffalo Princess that I’ve written about here before, to Hawaii).

Mercury is retrograde until August 9th ( more or less, stations direct on the 7th). Mercury retro is when you turn around and go back, you re-do, re-think, re-charge, re-work, re-new, re-member even. I spent some time this morning thinking about where I was headed in the wrong direction and needed to turn around. I also thought about the BP: she was sturdy, very cute, didn’t use much petrol. . . and had she aged well. . . cars in dreams, as in life, symbolize your power, how you get where you’re going. BP was not exactly up to speed with modern accessories. . . she had little

Me taking a picture of me on computer while iPad takes a picture of computer and iPhone takes a picture of iPad taking a picture. Who says I haven't mastered this complex tech stuff?

flippers on each side that raised as turn signals. Today I struggle with my new Iphone, Ipad. BP didn’t do so well when it snowed. I get paranoid when I’m cold, can feel myself shutting down, energetic body pulling in. Nice to live in Hawaii.

A long parenthesis: Mercury retro is also when things take a lot longer— stuff gets lost, traffic is snarled, keys disappear or get locked inside cars, but sometimes you find something you lost last time Mercury was retrograde. If you travel your baggage may go somewhere you don’t. Emails get sent to the wrong person. You get the picture. The small but powerful god of communication with wings on his hat and his heels (see the silver dime if you’re not familiar with his image), is not so comfortable with slowing down and turning around. Neither am I. We learn.

This has nothing to do with Mercury retro. . . Henry shot this pic of a bizarre double circle cloud over Diamond Head.

Steve Rosenthal's dynamite cover for BBCB.

I am canceling a contractual agreement I made with Xlibris to publish, Bare Breasts andCannonballs, my book about women pirates, as an e-book. Sorry about that. I am so eager to have this book out there for everyone to read. I love these bad girls and want them to set sail. . . but in a ship worthy of them and of the care I’ve given their book. Here’s the terrific cover for the book Steve Rosenthal designed. Love it.

I also heard from my great longtime friend, Kate Ellis, a writer, teacher, and adventurer who continues to live in New York City. I wrote about her courageous and inventive response to being mugged and raped in the vestibule of her condo in last blog. . .
I want to recommend her stunning memoir, Crossing Borders.

Kate's memoir. . .

“It’s in places where I don’t belong that the blessings of my life have found me,” Kate writes.
Crossing borders that separate the United States from her birthplace in Toronto, North America from Africa, marriage from singleness, privilege from poverty, and blackness from whiteness, her dramatic autobiography describes a journey of discovery that explores class, race, and feminism and, finally, reconciles the author to her own history.